Ronald Stark

Ronald Hadley Stark entered the Brotherhood drug smuggling scene in the summer of 1969. He had extensive connections with the CIA, especially the money-laundering and drug supply aspect. In The Elusive Jerry McDonald post, I go into quite a bit of history of something called Sea Supply, which had been started by OSS (then CIA) operative Paul Helliwell. In the early 1950s, his main job was to help Chiang Kai-shek to prepare for a future invasion of Communist China. Helliwell created a pair of front companies to supply and finance the surviving forces of Chiang’s Kuomintang Army. He organized Sea Supply, a CIA proprietary a shipping company in Bangkok with a “sea going bunch of vessels” that furnished weapons and other material to anti-Communist guerrillas in the hills of Burma, Laos, and Thailand. He established Civil Air Transport (CAT), a Taiwan-based airline, later Air America. Using Sea Supply, Helliwell imported large amounts of arms that were ferried into Burma on CAT airplanes. CAT then used the ‘empty’ planes to fly drugs (from fields of opium poppies that this mercenary army had cultivated) from Burma to Taiwan, Bangkok (Thailand) and Saigon (Vietnam). There the drugs were processed for the benefit of the Chiang Kai-shek’s corrupt government on Taiwan. When Helliwell was assigned to the Bahamas in 1964 (until 1975) to help launder LSD and marijuana profits, he formed (and controlled) Castle Bank and Trust Company, which also laundered Mafia money. It was initially ‘shelved’ for a few years, waiting…until it started coming into real use in 1968. Helliwell served the Mafia in a dual capacity as CIA banker and legal counsel. Helliwell’s law firm also represented Louis Chesler and Wallace Groves, both partners in Resorts International, another CIA front group. That’s actually what he was assigned there to do, set up offshore banks for CIA use, and he set up other banks as well. He established the Mercantile Bank and Trust Company in the Bahamas, and then later the American Bankers Insurance Company based in Galveston, Texas. Helliwell was an attorney, working out of Miami and he also served as legal counsel to a Panamanian holding company that controlled a Bahamas gambling casino connected with Meyer Lansky. He also established a Miami office of the Sea Supply Corporation – the primary reason was to create closer ties between the CIA and the Cuban Mafia. This included Santos Trafficante, that brought in Chinese white heroin that the Mafia distributed in the U.S. Santos Trafficante was a Tampa-based crime boss who was among those who lost out on gambling revenues when Castro took power in Cuba. Richard Helms, the new CIA director, was good buddies with the Mellon family and would often visit Billy Mellon/Hitchcock’s estate where Timothy Leary was presiding over the CIA’s project MKUltra LSD experiments. When things got too hot, Leary and Mellon/Hitchcok moved to the West Coast, shifting over to empowering the Brotherhood of Eternal Love which Leary and Mellon/Hitchcock helped get going in 1966, after “Farmer” Griggs had visited Leary that summer. So – now that Leary and Mellon/Hitchcock’s good buddy Richard Helms was heading the CIA, and Paul Helliwell had everything all set up and hunky-dory for them with the offshore banks they would use – lots of world-wide drug-running and money laundering operations then began in earnest.That’s who Paul Helliwell is. And gee whillickers, there sat ole Ron Hubbard, the long-term intelligence asset, with his newly formed mini-fleet of ocean going vessels just filled with young and gullible “save-the-world” types, just nice and conveniently available. Just one year after Helms, if you’ll forgive the pun, takes the helm of the CIA, the Sea Org had been formed 12 August 1967. . So… In August of 1969, CIA agent Ron Stark approached the Brotherhood of Eternal Love with an offer to bankroll their activities. Griggs, had just died of an overdose of synthetic psilocybin (a CIA MKULTRA test drug) at their ranch near Idyllwild They were looking for a new supplier and Stark kicked off the meeting by showing them a large bottle of liquid LSD (it was 2.2 pounds), enough for up to ten million trips. Stark also knew that he had to come in with some sort of propaganda about the “religious” nature of spreading the good word of LSD – just as Leary (the CIA agent) had done when he was recruiting Griggs. Stark told them that he had a mission to use LSD in order to: “facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people.” The Brotherhood was impressed, and the Golden Era of cheap, high-quality LSD began. From then on through to 1973, Stark and the Brotherhood dosed almost an entire generation of America’s youth. Stark could speak ten languages fluently, by the way, and the Brotherhood was not the only operation he was running – he had CIA ops going in several locations all around the world! Some people think that Stark’s one-world ideas were influenced by Robert Heinlein’s The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. Stark often cited it as a “revolutionary ‘handbook’, every bit as inspirational as the writings of Che Guevara.” The book is about a penal colony on the Moon, set in the year 2075. The million inhabitants – who are housed in huge domes containing artificial atmospheres – are either Earth deportees or their descendents. They cannot return because once their bodies adapt to the Moon’s gravity they can never readapt to the gravity of Earth. This lunar prison is brutally administered by a United Nations-appointed governor, who the revolutionaries try to overthrow. One of them, a character called ‘the Prof’, explains: ‘…revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science for the few who are competent to practice it. It depends on correct organisation and above all, on communications.’ How this conspiracy is accomplished, the book tells us, is that it starts with three people… these three in turn recruit two other people to form three new cells. This recruitment process continues until a large network of cells is built up. The flaw being still that if one main person is captured, it can lead to breaking all the other ‘cells’. Heinlein’s book details a more sophisticated system discussed in Heinlein’s book is a pyramid-of-pyramids setup – a sort of ‘Internet’ without the computers: ‘Where vertices are common, each bloke knows one in an adjoining cell… Communications never break down because they run sideways as well as up and down. Something like a neural net.’Damage can be stemmed and repaired because the cell member who discovers a breach in the network can pass warnings without having to know who receives the messages. This is all not actually a new idea, but the different in Heinlein’s futuristic vision, is that he gives the idea a twist: the conspiracy is helped by a miraculous super-computer, which is so powerful and complex that it ‘wakes up’ and becomes ‘self-conscious’. The computer develops a sense of ‘humour’ about the ‘stupidity’ of the colonial administration, plus a ‘rational will’ to overthrow them. The conspirators use the computer to set up front companies and fraudulently appropriate funds on the terrestrial stock exchanges. They then use the money to set up secret facilities for development of revolutionary war technology. Heinlein, through his “professor” character, carries right along with the standard propaganda of the New World Order – just like Hubbard did in his novella The End is Not Yet, where he uses the character Martel to implant (Hubbard’s own words about it) the reader with concepts it was desire for them to get – the main one being that Nationalism is the cause of war. Heinlein through his character tells the reader that the concept of the State has no existence except as ‘physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals.’ This implies that collaboration with the state is justifiable as a disguise within the strategy of systematic deception of everyone apart from those who are required to be ‘in the know’ for particular functions.So, when Stark said that he wanted to use LSD to: facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people.Stark had been sent in – to take over things and expand them even more, but, and this is very important – He was also there to set them up to be taken down. Taken down and replaced by other CIA assets, in a combined MI6/CIA covert operation. I’ll get into that more in a minute. The authors of Acid Dreams, Martin and Lee and Bruce Shlain, note that Ron Stark’s ‘fateful appearance at the Idylwild ranch’, coincided with certain ‘unpleasant changes’. One of which was that not long after Stark turned up, BEL founder, ‘Farmer John’ Griggs died of poisoning in circumstances his friends regarded as suspicious. Not long before being sent to America, that same summer in fact, Stark had been over in England working out some things there. By this time, psychiatrist R.D. Laing had been caught up in the Tavistock Institute’s ‘radical psychiatry’ movement – and David Solomon was amongst its accolytes. Solomon had been working with Richard Kemp, a drop-out science student, and his partner, Dr. Christine Bott, to try and create liquid cannabis (marijuana). After Stark had made contact with Solomon at Cambridge University, Solomon invited Kemp to ‘come meet a man with a million dollar inheritance’. Stark convened a meeting at the Oxford and Cambridge Club on London’s Pall Mall with Kemp, Simon Walton, Stark’s Scots assistant, plus Solomon and his friend Paul Arnaboldi (then famous as ‘Captain Bounty’ in the TV chocolate ad). What some have dubbed ‘The Great British LSD Plot’ was inaugurated within weeks of Stark’s first meeting with the Brotherhood in California. Stark also introduced Kemp to the Brotherhood’s chemists, Nick Sand and Lester Freidman. Kemp was soon working wonders at Stark’s lab in Paris and in the first run turned out a kilo of LSD.Stark was also using the Brotherhood’s contact at the U.S. Embassy, Aman Tokhi, to facilitate the huge amounts of hashish being imported into the U.S. – one of the main points of ingress was Las Vegas airport, where rented trucks would pick up the haul and move it into California. Ron Stark visited Afghanistan at least once with a plan to set up BEL facilities for making hallucinogenic THC derivative from Afghan hash oil. Kemp (his British connection) had worked out the first eight of the fourteen stages of the THC synthesis. By 1973, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (BEL) was essentially replaced by a new method (and new personnel) of running drugs – primarily using agency operatives and other cut-outs. Hence the apparent ‘crackdown’ which really wasn’t. In a very real sense, putting these smaller groups ‘out’ opened the door for the really big (and ongoing) drug smuggling operations that would not only keep humanity lowered, but would fund intelligence agencies in their evil operations to make sure it all stays that way. Such as putting in ‘approved’ dictators in the countries where slavemaster drug income was most important. At this time (1973) authorities estimated that some 20 members of the were in hiding or in exile – including Stark. Timothy Leary (after escaping prison with the help of BEL members and WEATHER underground) ended up in Afghanistan after fleeing the US, but the US Embassy evidently knew he was coming and got the Afghan authorities to deport him back to the USA. In 1972 Stark’s lawyer in Paris, Sam Goekjian, who had drawn up the charters for Stark’s front companies, was investigated by IRS agents and asked about Stark’s BEL connections. The DEA, who had just rolled-up much of the BEL network in the US, organised a follow-up raid on Stark’s Belgian laboratory on the campus of Louvain le Neuve, near Brussels, but Stark escaped, spiriting away the BEL’s investments for his own purposes. The CIA and MI6, through Scotland Yard and the BNDD, began the process of commandeering the drug networks while appearing to be ‘cracking down’ on drugs. Note: BNDD is a U.S. government term, it stands for Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (the predecessor of the DEA). And that brings us to Mr. Terrence M. Burke, buck-toothed CIA operative-extraordinaire. Yep, I’m being sarcastic. In 2013, it was announced that Terrence had just completed an audiobook titled: “Stories from the Secret War: CIA Special Ops in Laos”. The announcement says that after he returned from his ‘ops’ in Laos (which remember, the whole CIA involvement there in the first place was really about the drug trade) he received the CIA’s Intelligence Star for Valor, presented to him by then CIA director Admiral Raborn and Deputy/Director Richard Helms. Keep in mind, that Helms is overseeing the horrifyingly invasive and violating of human rights, program MKULTRA at this time.At that time, only 16 medals had been given out since the Agency’s inception in 1948. This PR announcement also tells us that Terry had been former Deputy Director and Acting Director of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. Basically, that is direct proof of CIA control and involvement in the ‘drug enforcement’ policies and actions of the United States government. THAT is really significant. It’s interesting watching others try to portray this guy in a false manner – I guess no one had actually seen a picture of him or these descriptions would clearly show themselves to be the somewhat skewed propaganda that they were. For example, he’s portrayed as “suave and swashbuckling” by Rolling stone. They had just met agent Terence Burke [name apparently misspelled – PR web has it as Terrence] Federal bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, ID card number 107, which put him [Terry said] just “a single digit away from James bond.” As Joe Eszterhas wrote in Rolling Stone, Burke was “suave and swashbuckling, a CIA veteran fluent in Pashtun and Farse [sic’ who had “once served as an undercover courier smuggling hashish from India to the United States and then joined the German Interpol to bust the smugglers.” – Timothy Leary: A BiographyThe rugged routes to Kabul teemed with worldwide youth in search of cheap drugs and enlightenment. With the idyllic dreamers came hard core criminals. Sent to Kabul to take on the criminals was Federal Narcotics Agent, Terrence Burke. Working undercover, often without backup, Burke dismantled smuggling operations in Afghanistan and India. He used “renditions” to return fugitives like Timothy Leary from Afghanistan to the U.S. and teamed with the Soviet KGB to close a drug route through the USSR. He challenged criminals in the Royal Palace and the Afghan Police. The issues he portrays in Afghanistan are still confronting us today.

Ronald Hadley Stark: The Man Behind the LSD Curtain

Posted Dec 02, 2010 29 commentsHippie Mafia Wanted Poster

"...revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science for the few who are competent to practice it. It depends on correct organisation and above all, on communications." -- Robert Heinlen

Ronald Hadley Stark LSD11/30/11 -- The curse of doing research out here in Weirdoland is that the really fascinating people are nearly impossible to do research on. For instance, when you're covertly running the world's largest LSD manufacturing and smuggling operation for the CIA, you're not going to be doing interviews in Newsweek or publishing an autobiography. That's precisely the problem with Ronald Hadley Stark, who is one of the most insane characters in the history of LSD -- and that's really saying something, don't you think?

This article has been updated considerably since I first published it. Stark's life story is beyond belief, so I think it's important to be meticulous. There are, no doubt, still hundreds of errors here.

For anyone unfamiliar with the tangle of political, scientific, cultural and covert forces behind spread of LSD, this article could get confusing. Ronald Stark is a central figure in David Black's book ACID: A Secret History of LSD, but the best overall introduction to this material would be Acid Dreams, by Lee & Shlain. It's short and very readable, laying out the overall history in clear terms. For more serious seekers, I highly recommend HP Albarelli's masterpiece, A Terrible Mistake, which is meticulously documented and considerably broader than mere LSD history.imageThe Super-Context

Stark had been working with US intelligence agencies for at least 9 years by the time of his most infamous moment, a legendary meeting with the "hippie mafia" drug syndicate called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (no joke.) They were looking for a new supplier and Stark kicked off the meeting by showing them a kilogram of liquid LSD -- for US readers, that's 2.2 pounds of acid. Needless to say, his resume was persuasive. He claimed to have a dedicated lab in France, but it's his political philosophy that really makes Stark such an interesting character:

"He had a mission, he explained, to use LSD in order to facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people. Stark did not hide the fact that he was well connected in the world of covert politics."

The Brotherhood was sufficiently impressed to bring Ronald Stark into the fold, and what followed was the Golden Era of cheap, high-quality LSD. From 1969 through 1973, Stark and the Brotherhood dosed a generation and got away with it, too.image

According to a figure quoted by everyone and verified by nobody, Stark made 20 kilograms of LSD in his career. Hippie lore generally gives Owsley Stanley the crown of the Acid King, but by Stanley's own estimates, his total production was a half kilogram. That might not sound like much -- but it adds up to over 5 million hits of acid. You can see why the Army and Navy were so interested in this compound: it is unusually powerful as drug molecules go.

Although the LSD story is closely associated with the Sandoz pharmaceutical corporation in Switzerland, most of the CIA's supply was actually domestic. Since at least 1954, the Eli Lilly Company was working under secret contract to keep the various MKNAOMI and ARTICHOKE research projects stocked up with magic mindfuck juice. The figures on their total LSD output are classified.

David Black: "Before clinching the deal with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Stark had been making some contacts in England among the radical psychiatry movement of R.D. Laing and the Tavistock Institute."

Obviously this was a big money business, and organized crime involvement was inevitable. Since small batches of LSD have a literally exponential commercial profit margin, technical expertise was highly rewarded. Consider the case of Clyde Apperson, a specialist in quickly setting up a fully functional manufacturing lab just about anywhere. More importantly, he could take them down even faster. For set-up, Apperson would charge $100,000 in cash -- take downs were only $50,000. He was finally busted working in the infamous abandoned missile silo with William Leonard Pickard in 2000.image

Everyone's always getting busted, though. The history of LSD is full of incredibly intelligent men making highly stupid decisions. Yet through it all, from Operation Julie to the Sand-Scully case, Ronald Stark just kept on trucking. He was a calculating cameo artist: always on the scene, never holding the bag.

Until he suddenly was: "Whatever game Stark was playing took an abrupt turn in February 1975 when Italian police received an anonymous phone call about a man selling drugs in a hotel in Bologna. A few days later at the Grand Hotel Baglioni they arrested a suspect in possession of 4,600 kilos of marijuana, morphine, and cocaine. The suspect carried a British passport bearing the name Mr. Terrence W. Abbott. Italian investigators soon discovered that "Mr. Abbott" was actually Ronald Stark."-- Source: Acid Dreams, pg. 213Ronald Hadley Stark AKA Terrence W. Abbott

Terrence W. Abbott was holding a genuine British passport, number 348489A, which was issued in 1973. The story of how he got it will never be told -- British intelligence refused to release his files. The FBI refused to share their files on him with the DEA's investigation, and the US State Department has actively interfered with many foreign attempts to extradite or prosecute Stark. The man led a charmed life.

"...the picture of Stark's activities began to broaden with the discovery of a vial of liquid and a cache of papers kept in a Rome bank deposit box. The vial was sent for forensic examination. The scientists reported back that they could not precisely identify the drug it contained. At best, they put it close to LSD. Perhaps it was the synthetic THC Stark had dreamt of creating; the papers included formulae for the synthesis. There were also plans for the bulk purchase of hemp seeds and calculations for shipments, investments and plant installation. Some of the papers went back to the Brotherhood days but they gave no details of his LSD operations after the Belgian episode. They did show that his range of interests in the drug world had expanded to include narcotics. There were details of the synthesis of cocaine." Source: The Brotherhood of Eternal Loveimage

Stark's time in Italy is the strangest and bloodiest chapter of his odd history. Although most accounts frame his 1975 arrest as a "bust," one commentator who does not is worth mentioning here: Phillip Willan. His view of Stark is shaped not by LSD folklore, but through earnest journalism and research into the history of political terrorism in Italy. The Ronald Stark that Willan presents is not a drug lord getting taken down, so much as an intelligence asset deliberately changing venues.

Willan: "Stark's arrest in Italy was prompted by a mysterious phone call to the police and he seems quite happy to go to prison, where his time was gainfully employed in winning the confidence of captured Red Brigades leaders, given that he turned down the opportunity of bail in August 1978."

Stark was no mere snitch, though. He was actively setting up infrastructure, teaching the principles of operational security and preaching the virtues of the "cell" structure. "He also provided them with a cryptographic system for coded radio communications," Willan says, although it should be assumed that Stark was also passing that system on to his secret employers. Prison records show that he met with Italian police and intelligence agents many times while he was networking there. It was in Italy that a large part of Ronald Stark's operation collapsed into the visible world. The facts that emerged are an education in covert warfare and intelligence operations.Some Heavy DudesHoward Marks | Mr Nice

"...his preferred to keep his range of contacts ignorant of each other's activities. Oftentimes he concealed the fact he was an American. His European associates were not privvy to his affairs in Africa, and those in Asia knew little about his work in the states. The brothers, for example, had no idea he was running a separate cocaine ring in the Bay Area." -- Acid Dreams, pg 250

Researching Roland Stark, I was reminded of people like Porter Goss, Henry Karl "Andijra" Puharich, or Barry Seal: it is unreal how much this guy got around. He stayed in close contact with the founders of "The Process Church of the Final Judgement," which is another hub in the Dark Network of occult history.

They began as a splinter group who broke ranks from Scientology, which meant they were waging spiritual war with L. Ron Hubbard from 1965 through 1974, which was a pretty bad year for "The Teacher," Robert DeGrimston. He was booted from his own cult and his wife divorced him on her journey to starting a successful chain of "Best Friends" animal shelters. (No joke.)image

All of which sounds way more lurid than it was. Stark was ultimately a drug dealer so beyond being Very Interesting, his link with the Process Church doesn't imply any shared philosophy...and doesn't exclude it, either. The oddball sociologist William Sims Bainbridge studied the group for months, and he didn't exactly make it sound like a blood magick sacrifice: "there was no violence and no indiscriminate sex, but I found a remarkably aesthetic and intelligent alternative to conventional religion." Then again, the Solar Temple was full of wealthy and sophisticated people who held refined parties and had very high-level conversations right up until the mass murder, mass suicide thing.

(For considerably more detail on the Process, refer to the Bainbridge essay Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process.)Timothy Leary TANSTAAFL

Timothy Leary was a perfect avatar for the Age of Horus: playful, brilliantly creative and blissfully unaware of the bad consequences he was unleashing. Although there is little evidence to tie Leary himself to the drug smuggling and merchandising activities of the Brotherhood, there is no question he quickly became the spiritual center of the group. For what it's worth, Leary himself downplayed their significance:

LEARY: "The whole concept of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love is like a bogeyman invented by the narcs. The brotherhood was about eight surfer kids from Southern California, Laguna Beach, who took the LSD, and they practiced the religion of the worship of nature, and they'd go into the mountains. But they were not bigshots at all. None of them ever drove anything better than a VW bus. They were just kind of in it for the spiritual thrill."

Maybe so -- but probably not. In September 1970, Leary escaped from prison in a complicated deal exposing just how serious the Brotherhood network had become. Money from Ronald Stark was paid to the Weather Underground, which is the precise point where the "hippie mafia" became connected to actual hippie terrorists. Leary himself wound up in Algeria under the (very) armed watch of Eldridge Cleaver, himself in exile. A year later, Leary and his wife were in Switzerland, living under the protection of the arms dealer Michel Hauchard. For a story about spiritual thrills, there's definitely a lot of guns involved here.Weather Underground Wanted Poster

At one point, though, maybe the Brotherhood really was just a group of hippies with a couple trunks full of weed. The Weather Underground were harmless student activists for awhile, too. Once Stark was brought into the Brotherhood, he quickly took change of the entire operation, establishing secure shipments and managing every aspect of their finances. "Stark warned them that buying real estate openly, as they had done, was much too risky -- but his lawyers could remedy the situation by hiding ownership in a maze of shell companies."

This is a repeated pattern in Stark's operations: he is always ready to create an organization where none exists. After Owsley got busted and the Brotherhood went international, many of the original bay area chemists got wise to what Stark was really doing. "We were definitely very gullible in believing the stuff he told us," as poor Tim Scully would later observe.

The Brotherhood got plugged into Stark's global underground very quickly: massive marijuana imports from the Middle East, shadow bank accounts in the Cayman Islands, and he was somehow micro-managing everything. Once he had flooded the West Coast with Afghan weed, Stark turned his attention to New York City, which was completely unprepared for the sheer quantity the Brotherhood supplied. From distribution to organizing street-level dealers, Stark was there, establishing Ordo Ab Chao is his own specific way.Howard Marks Mr Nice

Skilluminati readers may already be familiar with Mr. Nice, the Welsh arms trader and Hashish entrepreneur who paved the pipeline that brought Afghanistan's finest exports into the hands of hippies and other connoisseurs all around the world. His real name is Howard Marks and his pioneering work in cultural exchange was the foundation for everything from the Cannabis Cup to Afghanistan's ongoing civil war, although of course neither was actually Howard's fault. Unlike Stark, he's made a modest living telling colorful and contrite stories of his drug dealing days. Part of the Mr. Nice gig, of course, is that he swears he's never used violence or trafficked in "hard drugs" -- which was probably an even bigger factor in his early retirement than getting busted by the DEA. Afghanistan, of course, got very heavy very quick and Mr. Nice was steamrolled out of the picture in short order.

Most of what's known about Ronald Stark today is through an Italian magistrate named Giorgio Floridia, who released Stark from Italian prison in 1979. After Stark had gotten himself caught in 1975, he busied himself trying to convince anyone and everyone that he was operating with the blessings of the United States government. Four years later, he finally managed to persuade Floridia, who cited "an impressive series of scrupulously enumerated proofs" that Stark had given him.

At his appeals trial Stark changed identities once again, this time passing himself off as "Khouri Ali," a radical Palestinian. In fluent Arabic he spelled out the details of his autobiography, explaining that he was part of an international terrorist organization headquartered in Lebanon, called "Group 14." Stark's appeal failed, and he was sent back to jail.

But Italian police took a renewed interest in his case after they captured Enrique Paghera, another terrorist leader who knew Stark. At the time of his arrest Paghera was holding a hand-drawn map of a PLO camp in Lebanon. The map, Paghera confessed, had come from Stark, who also provided a coded letter of introduction. The objective, according to Paghera, was to forge a link with a terrorist organization that was planning to attack embassies.

Floridia also claims Stark worked for the Defense Department from 1960 on, and recieved paychecks from Fort Lee, in New Jersey. It is worth considering that Stark might have exaggerated his role and connections, and even fabricated evidence, in presenting his case to the magistrate who was in a position to free him. Either way, it worked. Stark was released on parole....and disappeared days later.

In terms of Floridia's motivation, it's worth considering the fate of the guy who came before him:

In June 1978 a Bologna magistrate, Graziano Gori, was assigned to investigate Stark and his astounding web of associates. A few weeks later, Gori was killed in a car wreck.

That, of course, might be the most "impressive proof" of all.Somehow Not the EndHegelian Dialectic LSD Social Engineering

Ronald Stark turned up in Holland in 1982. There's not a lot of published details, but it clearly involves 16 kilos of hasish and a Lebanese cover identity. He was busted en route to New York City. He got deported the next year and apparently died in custody -- because when Italy requested that he be extradited on terrorism charges, the US replied with a copy of Stark's death certificate.

(You guessed it -- "heart attack.")

His paper trail comes to an end here, although the reader can be forgiven for assuming his crusade continued covertly. There was certainly no retirement for a man like Stark. His mission was too important, too huge for a mere career.Zbigniew Brzrzinski and Menachem Begin plays chess at Camp David

...but then again, what was his mission, after all? Is it a mistake to place any stock in what he told the Brotherhood of Eternal Love? Perhaps not. Although Ronald Hadley Stark was many things to many people, the sole constant that emerges is Revolution. From the Weather Underground to the Red Brigades, from the PLO to the IRS, Stark was consistently moving in circles where the overthrow of government and the liberation of the people were central themes...circles that today would be considered "Terrorist." Certainly, Stark manipulated and lied to his contacts every step of the way, and it's safe to assume the speeches he gave to the Palestinians and Italians were much different from the picture he was painting in 1969 for the Brotherhood.

It's worth revisiting, though: "...in order to facilitate the overthrow of the political systems of both the capitalist West and communist East by inducing altered states of consciousness in millions of people." Now, Hadley's chosen network makes it pretty clear that he viewed automatic rifles and firebombs as equally valid tools for "inducing altered states of consciousness," and it's unlikely that a realist like Stark honestly believed that LSD was going amount to much more than a profitable business. Setting that aside, overthrowing both capitalism and communism sounds like an authentic statement of Stark's overall goals, or at least one that fits his sketchy and fast-moving modus operandi.

Ronald Hadley Stark LSDStark was an infiltrator, creating back channels for communication between intelligence and police agencies and the underground movements that were trying to fight them. The fact he was so successful and so prolific is what makes him a remarkable character. Throughout his documented life, Stark is relentlessly working with, for and against dozens of competing players. He travels constantly, juggles multiple identities and stays actively involved in multiple conflicts simultaneously.

Looking over his strange, tangled career, it's hard to avoid thinking that LSD was really not the point. The single biggest producer of raw LSD the world has ever known was not a True Believer, he was just passing through on his way to bigger and better things. His work for US intelligence agencies had less to do with blowing minds than establishing connections. Vast quantities of acid was perhaps more of a bona fide, a calling card to establish himself as a legitimate criminal figure.

Which brings us, finally, full circle.The Last VialA Harsh Mistress

In 1966, Putnam & Sons published a new novel from Robert Heinlein named The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. The plot concerns a worker's revolution on a Lunar colony, organized by a small group of people with considerable assistance from a self-aware supercomputer that controls the colony's infrastructure. Written in a distinctively abbreviated "Moonspeak," the book goes into remarkable detail about secure, secret communication networks. Stark was seldom without a copy and spoke highly of it around the world. Perhaps the closest we can ultimately get to unraveling his motives and beliefs is within the pages of a sci-fi story, rather than the life he left behind.

It's impossible to write about the character of Ronald Stark without discussing the character of Professor Bernardo de la Paz. As the brains behind the Lunar revolution, the Professor has several extensive monologues about the design principles behind covert operations. "Revolution," the Prof says, "is an art I pursue, rather than a goal I expect to achieve."

The end of the novel is pure Chinatown. The revolution gets subverted like revolutions always do, and Heinlein was really writing a love song about The Frontier itself. Revolution is the flame that extinguishes itself, for simple and practical reasons: "Every new member made it that much more likely that you would be betrayed," as the Prof puts it.

"Organization must be no larger than necessary -- never recruit anyone merely because he wants to join. As to basic structure, a revolution starts as a conspiracy; therefore structure is small, secret and organized as to minimize damage by betrayal -- since there are always betrayals. One solution is the cell system and so far nothing better has been invented."Covert Cell Structure

The Professor goes on to propose a mandala of three-member cells, all reporting through a single Leader node back towards the center. This compartmentalized approach allows the founders to both monopolize information flow and insulate themselves against exposure. The concept is simple and effective, and it has been proven here in the real world for decades, from terrorist networks to intelligence agencies to evangelical Christians. It is staggering to think of how much Ronald Stark was connected to, assuming he rigorously pursued the Professor's blueprint, as Art for Art's sake. It is sobering to realize that the long, wide trail of covert history I've outlined here was just a couple of cells that got busted, part of a larger picture that is gone completely here in 2010.

His greatest achievements were the successful conspiracies, the completed operations that will never get traced back to his careful planning and constant hard work. There are too many huge gaps and unanswered questions to leave much doubt that Ronald Hadley Stark had a very impressive batting average. He was in a line of work where invisibility is the goal, and his true legacy is hiding behind headlines we will never understand, out here in the herd.

pg 77 "Correctly organized and properly timed it is a bloodless coup. Done clumsily or prematurely and the result is civil war, mob violence, purges, terror. I hope you will forgive me if I say that, up to now, it has been done clumsily."Further Reading

Sorry, no LSD recipes here. Handy safety test: if you need to google the instructions, you're not qualified to perform them. Don't play with fire, kids.LSD Lab | DEA Bust

Be sure to check out the Cult of the Dead Cow's review of Acid: A New Secret History of LSD" -- full of further information on Stark.

The always-excellent Gary Lachman offers a sober and detailed take on The Process Church.

If you want to learn more about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, that's good: you should. There's an outstanding book on the subject, predictably titled The Brotherhood of Eternal Love I recently read a new book on the subject, Orange Sunshine, which wasn't nearly as good.

Finally, for deep background on WTF Ronald Hadley Stark was doing in Italy during those mysterious final years of his life, Philip Willan's book is essential: "Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy ."image

Stark Realities

"It was at this point that a mysterious figure named Ronald Hadley Stark appeared on the scene. The first time anyone had heard of Stark was when one of his emissaries turned up in New York to see Hitchcock. The man claimed to represent a large French LSD operation. He was seeking to unload his product through covert channels. Hitchcock, who was then trying to distance himself from the drug trade, directed his visitor to the Brotherhood ranch. A few weeks later Stark and his assistant traveled to Idylwild." (ibid, pg. 248) Ronald Stark

Stark is a most curious figure whom I shall write more on in a moment. For now, let's wrap up with Hitchcock's saga. The last notable event associated with Hitchcock, before he seemingly disappears from history, occurred in 1973 when he turned state's evidence against Sand and Scully in order to secure immunity from tax evasion and stock market malpractice charges then pending.

"The case against the Brotherhood acid chemists came to trial in San Francisco in November 1973 and lasted thirty-nine days. The trial pitted Billy Hitchcock against his former colleagues, Sand and Scully, who were accused of being the largest suppliers of LSD in the US during the late 1960s. Since Hitchcock had already been granted immunity, the defense strategy was to pin all the blame on him, portraying him as the 'Mr. Big' who single-handedly directed the entire acid operation. Hitchcock, for his part, tried to walk a fine line, giving just enough information to satisfy the prosecutors, but not enough to convict the defendants... The publicity generated by the trial crystallized in a sensational Village Voice article by Mary Jo Worth, 'The Acid Profiteers.' The article depicted Leary as a Madison Avenue huckster who was a front for Hitchcock's money. The whole psychedelic movement, according to Worth, was nothing more than a scam perpetrated by a profit-hungry clique."

(ibid, pg. 277-278) Scully got 20 years while Sand received 15. Hitchcock received a five-year suspended sentence and a $20,000 fine, the very definition of a slap on the wrist. Thus, despite serving as the banker for the largest LSD distribution network in the world at the time, there were no real consequences for William Mellon Hitchcock. Of course, this would hardly be the first time a rich man escaped justice in this nation, but Hitchcock's ties (both direct and indirect) to so many pivotal individuals and institutions behind the US psychedelic movement is rather striking. Was Hitchcock simply a bored heir looking for a few thrills or maybe even getting back at his upper crust upbringings? This is the view typically taken concerning Hitchcock yet it just doesn't seem to jive with what is known about him. Other than getting high, Hitchcock seemingly wanted no part of the hippie lifestyle many of his associates were embracing at the time. In fact, Hitchcock seems to have gone out of his way to maintain his establishment lifestyle. Further, Hitchcock seems to have few interests beyond making money. He reportedly didn't expect tot make much out the LSD racket yet he seems to have turned a pretty handsome profit anyway. Still, there were surely any number of other things a man with Hitchcock's status could have done to make fast money. Was Hitchcock then working for some branch of the US Intelligence community throughout the 1960s? Certainly the possibility has much merit. As noted above, the Mellon family has rather extensive ties to the US Intelligence community and Richard Helms, the Director of the CIA from 1966 till 1973, was in regular contact with the Mellon family in Pittsburgh during this time. Incidentally, this was also the same time frame that Mr. Billy became involved with the illegal drug trade. What's more, Hitchcock had ties to several banks with known CIA connections, some of whom he potentially used to launder funds generated by the Brotherhood.

"While William Hitchcock's intelligence role is not known to any degree of certainty... he certainly surrounded himself with spooks, mobsters and... Republicans. His deep involvement in Castle Bank and Trust is just one such instance. A CIA front in the Bahamas run by former OSS China hand (and former boss of E. Howard Hunt) Paul Helliwell, it was used as a personal bank by Richard Nixon, George .H.W. Bush, and Robert Vesco, as well as by an assortment of Republican movers-and-shakers and the occasional drug runner and Mafia don. Those who enjoy wallowing in Watergate will recall Castle Bank, but perhaps not realize that Billy Hitchcock was an important supporter of the institution. "His similar involvement with Resorts International, a spook-front and private Republican vault, is also well-known. The history of Resorts International has been brilliantly detailed in Jim Hougan's Spooks, and we will not go into any great detail here, but it is enough to say that Resorts is in the middle of not only the Watergate affair but also a vast array of intelligence operations that include anti-Castro Cubans, Mafia bagmen, illegal campaign contributions, and money laundering. The Nixon and Rebozo involvement with Resorts is only the tip of a very old and very dirty iceberg, and Hitchcock has managed to stay quietly in the shadows of these infamous politicos.

And all of this was apparently going on while Hitchcock was allegedly sticking it to the establishment via his drug operations. Or was it the establishment sticking it to the idealists behind the original hippie movement? Consider the man who took over Hitchcock's role in the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Ronald Stark. While there is no conclusive evidence that Hitchcock was working for the US Intelligence community, the same cannot be said of Stark. The fall of the Brotherhood would hardly effect Stark, who would continue as a major international drug dealer for the rest of the 1970s. He relocated to Europe and spent a decent amount of time in Italy hobnobbing with radical groups of both the left and right while continuing to cultivate drug connections spanning the globe. Stark was eventually arrested in Italy on a petty charge stemming from his involvement with various terror organizations. Just as it seemed as if Stark's luck had final run out an Italian judge made a rather startling revelation about him.

"The Italian government subsequently charged Stark with 'armed banditry' for his role in aiding and abetting terrorist activities. But he never stood trial on these charges. True to form, Stark dropped out of sight shortly after he was released from prison in April 1979 on orders from Judge Giorgio Floridia in Bologna. The judge's decision was extraordinary: he released Stark because of 'an impressive series of scrupulously enumerated proofs' that Stark was actually a CIA agent. 'Many circumstances suggest that from 1960 onwards Stark belonged to the American secret services,' Floridia stated." (Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, pg. 281) This is just one of many mysteries surrounding Stark. Another is his alleged association with legendary cult leader Charles Manson. I've written more on Stark's association with Manson here so I shall be brief. Manson's potential links to Starks were first proposed by Maury Terry in the highly controversial The Ultimate Evil. In this work Terry alleges that Manson, as well as David 'Son of Sam' Berkowitz (among others), was a member of a nation wide cult connected to drug and (child) sex trafficking, snuff films, and contract killings. This cult, sometimes referred to as the 'Four-P Movement' or simply 'the Children,' was said to have begun as an offshoot of the Process Church of Final Judgement, a British-based outfit founded by ex-Scientologists and active throughout the United States from the mid-1960s till the early 1970s. Supposedly this cult had ties both to organized crime (specifically various 'one-percenter' MCs) as well as the US Intelligence community. Charles Manson (top) & David Berkowitz (bottom), two of the more notorious figures linked to an underground cult network Ronald Stark may have also had dealings with ... According to Terry (via Berkowitz, allegedly) Manson was either a member of, or working for, this cult when the Tate/LaBianca killings occurred.

"Berkowitz informed a fellow inmate that Manson, who belonged to the Los Angeles chapter of the cult, was working 'on orders' when he directed his Family to commit the Tate/LaBianca murders. In The Ultimate Evil, Terry places Manson --two days after the Tate murders --driving a Mercedes-Benz belonging to a big-time LSD dealer, who, in Terry's description, was 'said to have been a former Israeli who had strong links with the intelligence community.' Terry took this to be one of the truly fascinating players in LSD history: Ronald Hadley Stark. In The Ultimate Evil, Stark is identified under the alias of Chris Jetz. "Although not an Israeli, Stark posed as one upon occasion, as he was fluent in several languages, and fond of assuming multiple identities." (The Shadow Over Santa Susana, Adam Gorightly, pg. 163)

William Mellon Hitchcock seems to have indirect ties to the whole Process/Manson circle. Hitchcock had some kind of link with Dr. Stephen Ward, the man who most likely ran the sex ring involved in the Profumo Affair. Reportedly one of the women involved in this sex ring (also noted above) was Mary Anne DeGrimston, who would go on to co-found the Process Church of Final Judgement with her husband, Robert. Hitchcock also had indirect ties with the Hell's Angels, who were supplied with STP by Nick Sand, a chemist he was bankrolling at the time. Outlaw MCs have long been associated with conspiracy theories surrounding the Process. Both Manson and the Process actively sought alliances with one percenters as has been well documented. Mary Anne DeGrimston, co-founder of the Process Church of Final Judgement and a possible member of Dr. Stephen Ward's sing ring. And finally there's Hitchcock's association with Stark, a man an Italian judge ruled was a US intelligence agent and who seemingly had some kind of connection to Charles Manson. I shall wrap up this installment with a little bit of speculation: If Hitchcock was in fact a US intelligence agent, then was he serving as a handler for various 1960s fringe individuals and movements --i.e. Leary, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the Hell's Angels, etc? Is this why then-CIA director Richard Helms was regularly meeting with the Mellon family in Pittsburgh throughout his directorship? Was he keeping tabs on Mr. Billy's operation? If so, was Stark a kind of replacement once Hitchcock became bogged down in legal entanglements? Or was it felt to be expedient to withdraw Hitchcock before things turned violent on the West Coast (i.e. the Manson killings, Altamont, etc) so as not to draw suspicion? After all, a dubious character like Stark being linked to Manson is one thing, but a member of one of America's oldest and richest families? That would certainly raise some interesting questions, such as why the wealthy were seemingly infiltrating left-leaning/populist movements on behalf of US intelligence. http://visupview.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-house-of-mellon-part-ii.htmlIt is not unfair to say that virtually everyone of the initial Manson Family victims were up knee-deep in the L.A. underworld of organized crime, especially in the drug market. It's also interesting to note that at the time of the Tate/LiBianca killings, a major shakeup in the California hallucinogen market was occurring. For a little further north, at roughly the same time Manson was attending Esalen Institute and few days before the murders, Brotherhood of Eternal Love founder 'Farmer' John Griggs kicked the bucket via an overdose. At the time the Brotherhood were the largest marijuana and hashish smugglers in California. With Griggs out of the way, the Brotherhood was opened up to the mysterious figure of Ronald Stark, who would turn them into the largest LSD distribution network in the world. Stark in turn was widely suspected of working with US intelligence. This has led some researchers, such as David McGowan, to theorize that the Manson killings were a part of some kind coup for control of the California hallucinogen market. McGowan states: "Were the Manson killings in reality part of what might be dubbed 'The Great Acid Coup of 1969'? Were they the result of an operation aimed at, among other things, killing off some competitors, intimidating others, and consolidating control of the hallucinogenic drug market? The possibility clearly exists. Police originally were drawn to the theory that the killings were drug related." (Programmed to Kill, pg. 142)

Ronald Hadley Stark was perhaps the largest source of American LSD in the late 1960s after Owsley Stanley's imprisonment in 1967.

Stark arrived in the spring of 1969 at the Laguna Beach, California home of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, a biker collective and LSD dealership. Previously unknown to the Brotherhood, he was quickly welcomed when he proffered a kilogram of pure LSD (equivalent to 5 million 200-microgram doses), or so the story goes. What makes this particularly interesting is that there had never been that much LSD produced commercially (by Sandoz Laboratories, the only commercially manufacturer of the drug); there would be little reason for a legitimate laboratory to produce so much and less reason for an illegal operation to produce so much at once. If the story is true, it means that whoever produced the acid intended it for a large number of people and was unconcerned about prosecution. The standard operating procedure for any illegal drug lab is to produce only somewhat more than satisfies immediate demand, for obvious reasons. The Brotherhood distributed a form of acid known as "Orange Sunshine," which had a reputation of having more unpleasant side-effects than Owsley's product had. Users had a greater incidence of symptoms akin to strychnine poisoning as well as more of a "speedy" feeling to their trips. In the words of Michael Hollinshead (the man who originally turned Leary on):

There was now (1968) little good acid around, and what there was - the so-called "street acid" - came mainly from California. There was something wrong with the synthesis; it was not pure. And you were never sure what it was exactly that you were taking, so I only dropped it on those rare occasions when someone gave me "Sandoz" or "crystal" acid... My evaluation had nothing to do with the notion that a wholly synthetic drug produced a wholly synthetic experience - the intellectual response - but was based on direct, first-hand experience (about 30 trips with street acid in all). And in each session I felt that there was something it lacked - it was too "electric," too "speedy" and too "mind-shattering." The earlier clarity of "insight" which I had obtained via the Sandoz acid was replaced by confusion, brokenness, words and worlds thrown into absolute dismemberment, or even absolute chaos, though, I must add, often coupled with a feeling that I can only describe as "sublime inflation," a super abundance of emotive energy, but it could not signify more a passionate flame and less the life-giving sun.

Ronald Stark was also, allegedly, either a CIA agent or a free agent temporarily in the CIA's employ. Evidence of this came to light when he was arrested in Bologna, Italy for drug trafficking in 1975. Magistrate Giorgio Floridia ordered that he be released on the grounds that he was a CIA agent (and had been since 1960). Floridia's evidence was circumstantial, but nonetheless interesting. While imprisoned, Stark was frequently visited by Wendy M. Hansen, from the U.S. consulate in Florence. The police had seized letters to Stark addressed to one of his illegal laboratories in Brussels from Charles C. Adams at the U.S. Embassy in London. Floridia also claimed that Stark had done secret work for the U.S. Defense Department from 1960 to 1962, and that there had been "periodic payments to him from Fort Lee, known to be the site of a CIA office." In 1984 a report was issued by an Italian parliamentary commission to study terrorism in Italy. The report concluded that Stark had been an adventurer who had been employed by the CIA, though it was not specified during what period.

Stark himself made several references to his association to the CIA, though nobody has quoted him as ever saying he worked for them directly. He claimed that he ended his relationship to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love and moved operations to Brussels thanks to a CIA tip. He also claimed to have plans to supply LSD to CIA-backed Tibetan guerrillas resisting the Chinese occupation.

There is clearly some possibility the CIA had reason to desire control of the LSD supply in California. Their MKULTRA program had been researching the possibilities of using the drug for mind control purposes since well before recreational use became popular, and had discussed the research potential of an entire community on acid (e.g. the Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco). The evidence that they did in fact, conspire to distribute underground LSD, or that Ronald Stark was involved, is tenuous at best, but is certainly worth looking at. In the words of Carl Oglesby, former head of Students for a Democratic Society:

What we have to contemplate nevertheless is the possibility that the great American acid trip, no matter how distinctive of the rebellion of the 1960s it came to appear, was in fact the result of a despicable government conspiracy.... If U.S. intelligence bodies collaborated in an effort to drug an entire generation of Americans, then the reason they did so was to disorient it, sedate it and de-politicize it. Source: (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1339261)

The curse of doing research out here in Weirdoland is that the really fascinating people are nearly impossible to do research on. For instance, when you're covertly running the world's largest LSD manufacturing and smuggling operation for the CIA, you're not going to be doing interviews in Newsweek or publishing an autobiography. That's precisely the problem with Ronald Hadley Stark, who is one of the most insane characters in the history of LSD -- and that's really saying something, don't you think?

Take some time meditating on that photo of him, by the way -- because it's the only verified picture of him that exists at the moment. This is not an article that lends itself to illustrations.

The Super-Context For anyone unfamiliar with the tangle of political, scientific, cultural and covert forces behind spread of LSD, this article could get confusing. There were a lot of famous and infamous names in the mix, yet curiously, very few of them ever overlap with Ronald Stark. Yesterday we discussed Al Hubbard -- but there's no evidence that he and Stark ever even crossed paths. Although, as we'll see, Stark had considerable CIA connections, there's also no evidence that Stark had any connection with, or even knowledge of, the MKULTRA program. Then again, 99% of those files were destroyed in 1973.

Where Stark did connect was a meeting in in 1969 with a hippie drug syndicate called The Brotherhood of Eternal Love. (No, not kidding.) They were looking for a new supplier and Stark kicked off the meeting by showing them a kilogram of LSD -- for US readers, that's 2.2 pounds of acid, baby. Needless to say, his resume was persuasive. According to a figure quoted by everyone and verified by nobody, Stark made 20 kilograms of LSD in his career.

Jim Keith offers a paragraph of details on Stark's twilight years that I've never seen corroborated, or even mentioned, anywhere else. That could just mean he did his job better than most journalists, or it could mean he's repeating rumors and gossip -- either way, for the sake of completeness:

Stark...was seen at the student uprisings in Paris in 1968, and was also present at the student demonstrations and labor strikes in Milan in 1969. In the 1970s he lived a posh lifestyle in Italy, hobnobbing with the sicilian Mafiosi, espionage agents of various coloration, and terrorists.

Some Heavy Dudes Researching Roland Stark, I was reminded of people like Porter Goss, Andijra Puharich, or Barry Seal: it is unreal how much this guy got around. I found him cropping up in articles I had from years ago, like Micheal E. Kreca's report on the manufacturing of the drug war. Stark shows up with some exceptionally creepy company:

Stark also was a close friend of the Los Angeles founders of a small breakaway Scientology sect called "The Process Church of the Final Judgement," English expatriates Robert DeGrimston Moore and Mary Ann McClean.

It's kinda suspect how the entire dark side of the hippie years came from California, a continuous stain that kept coming for five straight years. The Process Church shows up in every assassination, occult murder, and lone weirdo event during the late 60's and early 70's. They're connected to L. Ron Hubbard, Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, even the murder of Nicole Simpson, years later. Also, our favorite sociologist technocrat, William Sims Bainbridge, spent three years with them -- studying and learning. He published a book about it in 1978: Satan's Power: A Deviant Psychotherapy Cult

It probably sounds way more lurid than it was. Bainbridge didn't exactly make it sound like a frat party in hell: "there was no violence and no indiscriminate sex, but I found a remarkably aesthetic and intelligent alternative to conventional religion." You can read more in his essay Social Construction from Within: Satan's Process.

Giorgio Floridia Most of what's known about Ronald Stark today is through an Italian magistrate named Giorgio Floridia, who released Stark from Italian prison in 1979. Apparently, Stark had gotten himself caught in 1975, and spent the following years trying to convince anyone and everyone that he was operating with the blessings of the United States government. Four years later, he finally managed to persuade Floridia, who cited "an impressive series of scrupulously enumerated proofs" that Stark had given him. That series went like this:

Floridia cited Stark's frequent prison visits from Wendy M. Hansen at the US Consulate in Florence, "Dear Ron" letters from Charles C. Adams at the US Embassy in London, addressed to Stark's LSD lab in Brussels (siezed by Italian police after his arrest), and his links with Philip B. Taylor III at the US Consulate in Rome.

Floridia also claims Stark worked for the Defense Department from 1960-62, and recieved paychecks from Fort Lee, in New Jersey. It is worth considering that Stark might have exaggerated his role and connections, and even fabricated evidence, in presenting his case to the magistrate who was in a position to free him. Either way, it worked. Stark was released on parole....and disappeared days later.

In terms of Floridia's motivation, it's worth considering the fate of the guy who came before him:

In June 1978 a Bologna magistrate, Graziano Gori, was assigned to investigate Stark and his astounding web of associates. A few weeks later, Gori was killed in a car wreck.

That, of course, might be the most "impressive proof" of all.

Somehow Not the End Stark turned up in Holland in 1982. He got deported the next year and apparently died in custody -- because when Italy requested that he be extradited on terrorism charges, the US replied with a copy of Stark's death certificate. (You guessed it -- "heart attack.")

Of course, lets keep things in perspective, here. The 1960s were an incredible explosion of pure human love and positive energy. Everyone woke up to social injustice and racial prejudice and saved the world. I don't want to pretend that the "counterculture" was some sort of big mirage teevee show to keep people distracted. FBI never ran an operation called DEADHEAD, and they certainly never wrote any documents claiming that their employee, Jerry Garcia, was a huge help in "siphoning off student dissent and re-channeling it into self-destructive hedonism."

I could do no better for an ending than this Kreca quote:

To take a lesson from Orwell, what is more important about the 1960s, indeed, about any period in history, is not so much what really happened as how that period is remembered publicly decades later.

Be sure to check out the Cult of the Dead Cow's review of Acid: A New Secret History of LSD" (http://www.cultdeadcow.com/archives/2005/12/a_book_review_of_dav.php3)